Seducing my hot maintenance man

Chapter 7

Aubrey’s POV

I feel like I’m being scammed.

Everything about this ‘not a dinner date’ meal with Greyson feels strange and surreal. Like it IS an actual date, and that he is trying way too hard to impress me.

Can I really honestly believe anything he’s saying, though? Is he really some guy who is a sort of local real estate mogul, and that he’s actually doing maintenance at The Pines on 4th building just for ‘fun’? Who does that? No one that I’ve ever heard of. It just doesn’t seem realistic.

And somehow he’s got the restaurant owner (or someone who pretends to be the owner of Lee’s Pho King restaurant), in on the scam to try and convince me that it’s all somehow legit.

If this guy actually is for real, though, then he must be very wealthy. Which I definitely don’t find to be very believable. And if he really is wealthy and trying to impress me, he should be taking me out to a nice restaurant for dinner. Not some ‘go to the counter and pay first’ kind of place where his buddy works. And he certainly doesn’t dress like he comes from money. He’s dressed in casual work clothes appropriate for a maintenance man.

I also suspect that my brother might be in on this scam somehow, as well. Did Nick and Greyson set me up together, along with ‘Lee’? And if so, to what purpose? Other than Nick seemed to think I needed to give Greyson a chance for some reason.

I suppose I can play along. For now. As Greyson himself had said, I’m hungry and my oven doesn’t work.

Or does it? I didn’t think to check if the oven was even plugged in. Or whether the burners at least work. Perhaps I could have pan fried the salmon for dinner? I should consider investing in an air fryer if it might take a few days, although I’d rather not spend money needlessly right now if I have an alternative.

“How am I going to cook my salmon tomorrow?” I ask in between bites of my salad roll appetizer. “It’s already been defrosted. I don’t know if it’s a good idea to wait until Monday to cook it. And while it’s nice that you’ve offered to pick up the tab here, I’d rather not be forced to eat out all weekend long. It can get expensive and unhealthy to do that too often.”

I take another bite of my salad roll, drenched liberally with a delicious velvety peanut sauce that is a perfect blend of tangy sweet and heat. I could seriously just eat this peanut sauce with a soup spoon, and forget the salad rolls. Although I admit that the salad rolls are actually kind of good, too.

“That’s a very good point,” Greyson says, obviously thinking hard for more than a minute. “I suppose I could lend you my kitchen to cook in. I don’t know that I have very many cooking utensils, since I rarely eat in. So you’d have to bring your own stuff.”

“That’s an idea,” I reply doubtfully, as I’m not entirely in favor of that plan for a variety of reasons. “A sort of cozy, playing house kind of idea. And it’s also super complicated. So no, I’m not on board with that plan at all.”

“Have you got a better idea then?” He asks, obviously not expecting one. Challenge accepted!

“So wait, you claim that you never cook?” I confirm as my brain works overtime to come up with better solutions to this perplexing problem to deal without a working range for an entire weekend. “Could you maybe just take your oven and install it in my kitchen. Then just get the new oven for your apartment? That way I don’t have to keep running between our two apartments for things I forgot, multiple times a day? It seems to be a far more sensible solution in my opinion.”

His mouth drops open in shock.

“Yeah,” he says slowly, nodding at my suggestion. “That actually could work. I’d just need someone to help me move the unit. Ovens are very heavy and cumbersome.”

I smile at my brilliant solution as I try a bite of the lemongrass chicken and shrimp noodle bowl that just arrived in front of me. I feel that it needs a bit of a kick, so I squirt a fair amount of sriracha on it before taking another bite. Ah, perfection!

“I’m sure you could get my brother to help,” I add as an option. “Seeing as how he broke my oven in the first place.”

“Why would you think your brother broke it?” He asks, looking perplexed.

“I don’t know, but it worked just fine when I used it yesterday,” I say with a shrug of my shoulders. “It’s possible he somehow disabled it as an excuse to get out of eating the boring frozen pizza that I left him for lunch. My brother Nick can be lazy at times, but he’s good with electronics and mechanical things in general. He likes to take things apart to figure out how they work. He’s studying to be an electrical engineer.”

I don’t actually expect anyone to admit to doing anything underhanded or sneaky. But I certainly won’t willingly believe them to be completely innocent either. I’m a lawyer, so I expect everyone on the planet to have an agenda of some sort. Nick wants me to be in a relationship so I won’t be on his case about his own life, lack of ambition, and direction. While this guy might just be in it for the s*x, and possibly a sugar momma with good long term job prospects.

I might not mind a quick fling with the maintenance man. It’s been a few months since I’ve been out on a date, and a girl has needs. This guy looks like he’d give me a hell of a good time between the sheets, and he is a lot hotter than anyone I’ve been out with previously so it’d be a bit of an ego boost. But I’m working on my career right now, so a long term relationship is definitely not in the cards for me and mister maintenance dude.

“Speaking of your brother,” Greyson brings up a few minutes later. “I don’t recall seeing any credit check on file for him. All residents over the age of 18 need to submit an application.”

“I’ve read through my lease agreement very thoroughly, and I am well aware of that,” I inform this apparently snoopy maintenance man. “Nick is just a short term guest. He lives in Arizona, and will be headed back there to college on Wednesday.”

“Alright, I suppose that’s fine then,” Greyson agrees, but he looks thoughtful still. “Once dinner is over, though, I think I might take another look at your range, to check it for any obvious signs your brother messed with it, now that you’ve explained his destructive little hobby.”

“Knock yourself out,” I reply. It’d be great if he found the issue and neither of us would have to be inconvenienced all weekend long. “And if it turns out my brother was involved, I’ll warn him off of doing something like that again.”

“You really believe he’d take you seriously?” Greyson asks, obviously thinking I’m some sort of pushover.

“Definitely,” I reply with confidence. “I know how he thinks and I understand what motivates him. My little bro might be devilishly clever with mechanical and electrical things, but I’m not entirely stupid, either. I understand how people’s minds work.”

“If you say so,” Greyson says, not looking convinced. We both go back to eating our dinner in silence. And afterwards we head back to my apartment, where I find Nick sitting on the couch watching TV, a couple of Chinese take out containers spread out on the coffee table in front of him.

“Hey, I got plenty of food here if you’re hungry!” Nick calls out to me with a friendly wave.

“Where’d you get money for that?” I ask, since I know for a fact that he’s broke.

“Dad sent me the money for takeout since the oven was busted and I couldn’t heat up the pizza,” he claims. Mhm. I thought that pizza looked rather staged.

“I’ve already eaten,” I tell him truthfully. Although I notice he’s been eating directly from the containers, as the fork is still sticking out of one. That’s how lazy my little bro is, as he can’t even be bothered to use dishes because he’d have to wash them. Plus he knows I’m not going to touch his contaminated food with a ten foot pole. “Go help Greyson to move the oven since it’s busted. He’s willing to install the one from his apartment into here since he never cooks, but it’s too heavy for him to do alone.”

Nick makes a face at that, but heads to the kitchen to ‘help’. A minute or so later I hear something that’s not entirely unexpected. To me, at least.

“Hey, look!” Nick says, sounding shocked. “The plug wasn’t plugged all the way in! I’m surprised it didn’t actually fall out.”

Yeah, sure. And wouldn’t you know it? Once it’s been plugged all the way back in, the oven works perfectly fine!

“Image that!” I say, giving Greyson a knowing look. “I wonder how that happened?”

Once Greyson is gone, though, I lay into my little brother about his obvious stunt.

“Pull another prank like that again,” I say sternly. “Just one more. And you can forget about using my guest bedroom anymore. You can give Paxton a good night kiss from me!”

Nick grumbled about it, but he apologized and promised not to mess with anything else in my apartment. Ever.